Gerhard Anton von Halem

File:Gerhard Anton von Halem.jpg

Gerhard Anton von Halem

Gerhard Anton von Halem (2 March 1752 – 4 January 1819) was a German writer, jurist and civil servant.

Biography

Early life and education

Gerhard Anton von Halem was born in Oldenburg — which at that time belonged to Denmark —, the son of Anton Wilhelm von Halem (1711–1771), a city syndic and judicial councilor, and his wife Magdalena Sophia Wardenburg (1733–1809). After the early death of his first son, his father attached importance to a good education of his remaining son, also in order to bring him as quickly as possible into an income-securing, but also prestigious professional position. Halem thus had early access to his father's library. He was initially taught by tutors and attended the Latin school in Oldenburg from 1761. Here he received his first literary impressions through his teacher Johann Michael Herbart, with whom he remained friends throughout his life. At the age of 16, he already attended the Brandenburg University in Frankfurt an der Oder and later the University of Strasbourg.

His life, however, was not only determined by his education for the legal profession, but at the same time he was to develop civic virtues in order to achieve social and societal standing as an academically educated achiever in addition to professional advancement. Thus he undertook trips to Bremen, Hamburg and Holland with his father, eagerly attended theaters and concerts, traveled to Berlin during his studies and learned the Italian language. After an internship at the Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar, he earned a doctorate in law in Copenhagen at the age of 18.

After returning to Oldenburg, he initially assisted his father in his law firm and, after his death in 1771, took over the business and the feeding of the surviving family.

Entry into the Oldenburg civil service and nobilization

As early as 1775, the Enlightenment philosopher entered the civil service of Oldenburg, which had become independent again after the Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo in 1773 and was elevated to a duchy. With the creation of the independent duchy after a long Danish administration and the establishment of the residence and administrative center in the city of Oldenburg, Halem had the opportunity to participate in the formation of a moderately reform-oriented state administration in the sense of the Enlightenment from a group of academically educated, efficient and loyal civil servants.

Initially, he worked as an assistant to Georg Christian Oeder, the bailiff exiled from Denmark after the Struensee affair, and then took over the position of the late Helfrich Peter Sturz as a judicial councilor in the Oldenburg government chancellery. During this time, Halem was instrumental in the reforms of the Oldenburg social and judicial system as well as the infrastructure and land law.

Halem had belonged to the Oldenburg Masonic Lodge Zum goldenen Hirsch since 1776 and served as its Master of the Chair from 1785 to 1790. He followed the reform efforts of Freemasonry in a time of continuing crises with interest and sympathy. He was at least close to the Illuminati Order, and was acquainted with the two leading representatives of the order in northern Germany, Adolph Freiherr Knigge, Johann Joachim Christoph Bode and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, for whom he also reviewed the latter's General German Library.

In 1792 he received the imperial nobility and the improvement of his coat of arms in Munich.

Halem was particularly interested in modernization in the cultural sphere. The excellent hymnal introduced in Oldenburg in 1792 was his initiative. With Oeder and Sturz, in addition to professional contact, he also formed a friendship based on literary and educational interests. They read Greek and English literature in a small common circle, besides Homer especially Shakespeare and Milton. In 1779, he visited Hamburg and met Klopstock and other fellow members of the Enlightenment Society there. Inspired by Klopstock's literary society, Halem also founded such a reading and discussion circle in Oldenburg, where ideas of a predominantly literary-aesthetic education, but also political, social or other explosive questions were discussed in convivial company, especially during the Napoleonic period. Halem presented most of his literary works in this Literary Society, and then published them after critical examination by its members. For example, in the Blätter vermischten Inhalts, a journal he edited from 1787 to 1797 with friends from the Literarische Gesellschaft, the purpose of which was to contribute to the transmission of contemporary practical and theoretical knowledge in many areas of life and work. There he published preliminary studies and parts of his Oldenburg history. The newspaper's program, which was not always free of an attitude of pandering to subjects by the sovereign and his officials, was continued by Halem and his friends from 1804 to 1807 with the Oldenburgische Zeitschrift. In Oldenburg, he maintained a lively contact with his friends such as Gerhard Anton Gramberg, Christian Kruse and later Christian Ludwig Runde, but also with his brother Ludwig Wilhelm Christian (1758–1839).

Activity during the French period

Halem remained in the service of Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig for most of his life. In 1807, he was appointed head of the government chancellery and consistory, thus reaching the pinnacle of his career. When Oldenburg was incorporated into the French Empire in 1811 (Oldenburg French period), the duke offered to accompany Halem into Russian exile. Halem refused, however, citing his advanced age, and initially entered French service as a judge at the Oldenburg tribunal, losing his previous offices. In 1812 he had to move to Hamburg, where he became a member of the Imperial Court (Cour Impériale) of the three Hanseatic Departments. Even when Hamburg was recaptured by French troops in the turmoil of the wars of liberation after a brief occupation by Allied troops, Halem returned to his post at the Imperial Court in Hamburg.

One reason for this can be seen in the fact that Halem had high hopes for new French, orderly, enlightened and bourgeois jurisprudence, especially since he himself tried to implement a reform in this direction in Oldenburg. As a lawyer, he followed the development of jurisprudence in revolutionary France. He welcomed the introduction of the Civil Code also in the annexed departments in northern Germany in a speech whose content has been handed down.

Later life

After Napoleon's defeat and the subsequent Restoration, Halem became First Councilor of the government in Eutin in the Principality of Lübeck, which belonged to Oldenburg, since after the wars of liberation, reinstatement did not seem possible, contrary to his hopes, due to his Francophile attitude and suspicion — even in public — against his continued "friendliness towards the French". In Eutin, he had been a judicial councilor in the highest authority of this part of the country since March 1814. The esteem in which von Halem must have been held by the returning duke is shown by the fact that, in the course of this transfer, Peter Friedrich Ludwig purchased the private library of his official and had it brought to Eutin Castle, where Halem could continue to use this collection of 8,000 volumes. Halem's library forms the basis of today's Eutin State Library.

He was on friendly terms with Gerhard Anton Gramberg, country doctor in Oldenburg and ducal personal physician, to whose daughters Frederike Wilhelmine and Sophie he was married in his second and third marriage. With the latter he published various journals of regional importance.

Legacy

Halem was a typical representative of the late Enlightenment. He was on friendly correspondence terms with the most important contemporaries. These included Christoph Martin Wieland, Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg, Gottfried August Bürger and Johann Heinrich Voss.

In a letter to Wieland, Halem speaks of opinion publique. He is thus probably the first to introduce the concept of public opinion into German usage. For a long time, literary scholars assumed that this only happened through Georg Forster.

Halem welcomed the French Revolution, which was also reflected in his literary work and earned him the acquaintance and friendship of Konrad Engelbert Oelsner.

Previous research took little notice of Halem. The reason for this is partly due to an exchange of letters between Schiller and Goethe in 1802, in which they refer to the journal Irene, which Halem edited from 1801 to 1806.

Writings

After Halem came into contact with literature at an early age and developed a strong interest in this art form, he wrote his first story during a trip to the fashionable spa of Pyrmont, which was included in the German Museum by Heinrich Christian Boie in 1778 and earned him Boie's friendship for many years.

In the 1780s he became known to a wider audience through his publications German Museum but also in the Göttinger Musenalmanach and in the Musen-Almanach of Johann Heinrich Voss. His German poetic models were above all Wieland and Klopstock, Gleim and Gellert. Of the English, fashionable at the time, Sterne, Young, and Pope were particularly well received, along with Ossian (Macpherson). He first united his early verse, short prose, and poetry in the collection Poesie und Prose, published in 1789.

Halem's drama Wallenstein is considered the most important adaptation of the material before Schiller's trilogy. It was first published in its entirety in 1786. Previously, an excerpt was printed in German Museum Gottfried August Bürger proofread the piece. A second — slightly expanded — version appeared in 1794. No proof has yet been found as to whether Schiller knew this text. Parallels in the presentation are certainly present, but are probably due to the use of the same sources.

His travelogue Views of a Part of Germany, Switzerland and France on a Journey in 1790 (1791) reports on the quietest phase of the events in France, but it closes the gap between the reports of Campes and Reichardt. The travelogue is Halem's most important text and is in no way behind other significant travel accounts of its time. Particularly striking is the encyclopedic knowledge Halem draws upon in composing it. The text, written in epistolary form, shows a positive attitude towards the French Revolution. Even after the execution of the king and the Grande Terreur, Halem was able to maintain his view, although he clearly distanced himself with an ode entirely in the style of his literary model Klopstock, and acknowledged the progress of the revolution, especially in the legal field. In his travelogue he advocates the liberation of the Jews, and in his dramolet The Voice of Nature (1794) he celebrates the abolition of slavery in the French colonies by the Convention in the same year.

A second travelogue written during a trip to Paris in 1811 — in order to pay homage to Napoleon — does not have the significance of the 1791 Views of a Part of Germany, but the fact that Halem had it published in 1813, although Napoleon's star was already sinking, remains remarkable. It was on this trip that von Halem met Alexander von Humboldt. His assessment that "the great vivacity of his mind still [promises]" much to science shows how prescient Halem was with regard to Humboldt. Halem recognized what the German public did not realize until nearly 200 years later.

In addition to poetry, prose pieces, and numerous essays on a wide range of topics, his work includes a three-volume History of the Duchy of Oldenburg, modeled on Justus Möser's Osnabrück History. Furthermore, Halem wrote biographies of the Oldenburg-born field marshal general in Russian service, Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, and Peter the Great. Surprisingly, the response to these works was greater in Sweden, Russia and France than in Germany. Due to its richness of sources, the latter writing is considered not only the first scientific account of Peter, but also an important tool of today's Russian historical research.

The song Gretel's Warning (from Sechs Gesänge für Singstimme und Klavier, op. 75/4, composed in 1795, completed in 1809), composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, is based on a poem by Halem. This poem is thematically and stylistically based on Gottfried August Bürger's Des Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenhain.

Private life

He was married several times. His first wife was Susanna Sophia Wardenburg (1762–1782) on January 12, 1781. The couple had one daughter:

• Berhardine Wilhelmine Sophie (1781–1808), married to the theologian Adam Christian Langreuter (1772–1859)

After the death of his wife, he married Friederike Wilhelmine Gramberg (1772–1815) on June 4, 1798. The couple had the following children:

• Susanne (1802–1865)
• Arnold (1799–1848), married to Dorothea Elisabeth Heuer (1797–1880)
• Marie (1801–1854)
• Antonie (1806–1885)
• Elimar (1809–1846), physician; married to Friederike Reisner (1820–1870)
• Friederike (1815–1872)

After his second wife died in childbirth, he married her younger sister Sophie (1780–1864) on December 25, 1816. This marriage remained childless.

Through his son Elimar von Halem, he is a direct ancestor of Nikolaus Christoph von Halem (1905–1944).

Works

• Wallenstein, ein Schauspiel (1786; drama)
• Blätter vermischten Inhalts (1787–97; with Gerhard Anton Gramberg)
• Poesie und Prosa (1789; poems and essays)
• Blicke auf einen Theil Deutschlands... (1791; travelogue; annotated edition, 1990)
• Andenken an Oeder (1792; poem)
• Dramatische Werke (1794)
• Geschichte des Herzogthums Oldenburg (1794–1796)
• Ein dringendes Wort an das Heilige Römische Reich... (1795; essay)
• Blätter vermischten Inhalts (1787–1797)
• Blüthen aus Trümmern (1798; poem)
• Lebensbeschreibung des Russisch-Kaiserlichen Generalfeldmarschalls Burchard Christoph von Münnich (1803; biography)
• Leben Peters des Großen (1803–1804; biography)
• Schriften (1803–1810; essays)
• Oldenburgische Zeitschrift (1804–1807)
• Jetzt geltendes Oldenburgisches Particular-Recht in systematischem Auszuge (1805; collection of law texts)
• Sammlung der wichtigsten Aktenstücke zur neuesten Zeitgeschichte... (1807)
• Jesus, der Stifter des Gottesreiches (1810; epic poem)
• Magazin für das Civil- und Criminal-Recht des Kaiserreiches Frankreich (1812)
• Erinnerungs-Blätter von einer Reise nach Paris im Sommer 1811 (1813; travelogue)
• Statistisches Handbuch für das Departement der Wesermündungen auf das Jahr 1813 (1813; yearbook/calendar)
• Töne der Zeit (1813; poems)
• Vernunft aus Gott... (1816)

References

• Gerhard Anton v. Halem's Selbstbiographie. Zum Druck verarbeitet von seinem Bruder Ludwig Wilhelm Christian v. Halem. Oldenburg: Schulze (1840).
• "Halem, Gerhard Anton von." In: Joachim Rückert & Jürgen Vortmann, eds., Niedersächsische Juristen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (2003), pp. 78–82.
• Gerecke, Anne-Bitt (2011). "Halem, Gerhard Anton von: Wallenstein, ein Schauspiel. Göttingen 1786." In: Heide Hollmer & Albert Meier, eds., Dramenlexikon des 18. Jahrhunderts. München: C. H. Beck, pp. 123–24.
• Heinze, Ronald (2006). "Halem, Schiller und Wallenstein. Probleme der Dramengestaltung und der Darstellung des Krieges im „Wallenstein“." In: Helle Panke, ed., Friedrich Schiller und das lebendige Erbe der Aufklärung. Berlin.
• Lange, Gerhard (1928). Gerhard Anton von Halem (1752–1819) als Schriftsteller. Leipzig.
• Müller, Klaus-Peter; Karl-Heinz Ziessow (1990). Im Westen geht die Sonne auf. Justizrat Gerhard Anton von Halem auf Reisen nach Paris 1790 und 1811. Oldenburg.
• Mutzenbecher, August (1879). "Halem, Gerhard Anton von". In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). 10. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 407–409.
• Raabe, Paul (1982). Der Briefnachlaß Gerhard Anton von Halems (1752–1819) in der Landesbibliothek Oldenburg. Oldenburg.
• Randig, Christina (2007). Aufklärung und Region – Gerhard Anton von Halem (1752–1819). Göttingen.
• Ritterhoff, Claus (1992). "Gerhard Anton von Halem." In: Hans Friedl, ed., Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg. Oldenburg: Isensee.
• Steinhoff, Karl (1980). "Gerhard Anton von Halem (1752–1819). Oldenburgischer Geschichtsschreiber, Literat und Weltbürger im Zeitalter der Aufklärung." In: Oldenburgische Familienkunde 22 (1), pp. 147–67.

External links

• Works by Gerhard Anton von Halem at German National Library